What's Been Taken
by LadyV77
Summary: Ian’s thoughts in and around his ‘killing’ of Daniel. What might have happened between Ian and Sara following the true death of the 2,000-year-old man. One-shot.


**Title:** What's Been Taken

**Rating:** PG-13 for brief violence

**Summary:** Completed. Ian's thoughts in and around his 'killing' of Daniel. What might have happened between Ian and Sara following the true death of the 2,000-year-old man. One-shot.

**Disclaimer:** Don't own anyone or anything.

**Spoilers/Continuity:** Set in Season 2

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Ian waited patiently for Daniel to exit Sara's building after their tryst. Father's spirit had told him what the other man was, and what Ian must do to make Sara see the truth. Ian wondered briefly why the Witchblade did not show Sara the 2,000 years the man now calling himself Daniel had wandered the earth. But perhaps it had tried to show her and she had ignored it. It would not be the first time she refused to believe that the impossible was true. Or maybe Daniel had more power than Father could see and was able to stop the Blade from warning Sara.

As the Roman appeared on the sidewalk, Ian moved forward from his hiding place to time it to meet up with Daniel where Sara would see them. He regretted briefly that he had to be the one giving Sara this new pain. Father had taken so much from her already: her real family, the father she had loved more than anything, the chance to know Ian in his true role as her Knight.

But that last one was a greater pain to him than it would ever be to his Lady. He knew what he had been to her in past lives, but he doubted she would ever know the truth. He was not supposed to tell her. It had been one of Father's greatest rules. He did not know if he could go against it, even though Father had been gone for some time.

Ian almost gasped when the Witchblade sent him a brief vision as Daniel walked unknowingly toward him. His connection to the ancient mystical weapon had been growing since Father's fall. It wasn't the first time he had received a vision from the Blade, but previously they had all been warnings that his Lady needed his help.

This was a flash of Ian helping his Lady try to save a loved one. A sandy-haired Irish bard, the reincarnation of the traitor Conchobar in the form of a singer. It felt like it was meant to be the recent past, but he and Sara had yet to meet the man in his vision. Perhaps it was from that other life, the one Sara had changed after killing him.

Whether the Blade meant the vision as a plea for mercy or an acknowledgement that Sara and loved ones were quickly parted, he did not know. And he did not have the time to sit and mull it over. As Daniel turned back toward Sara's building to wave at her form standing in the window, Ian moved out of the shadows. He lifted his sword to the other man's neck and sliced in one smooth motion. As Daniel's body slid to the ground, Ian walked calmly away, his Lady's anguished cries cutting into him.

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Hours later, Ian listened intently as Daniel explained to Sara what he truly was. The other two had no idea he was there, and he wondered briefly if the immortal had chosen the name of Sara's best friend for his most recent attempt at a life on purpose. Hi mind often went off on tangents when things were discussed that he already knew.

Ian watched Sara slide the Witchblade into Daniel's gut. He wondered for a moment why the man had chosen to be impaled in that location. It was painful, Father had shown him that on more than one occasion.

But the pain Ian now felt was for his Lady's despair at having to take the life of her lover. For her confusion over yet another impossible situation the Witchblade had thrown her into. When Sara began sobbing over the still form of the ancient man who had finally found peace thanks to her, Ian fought his instinct to go to her and comfort her. She would not appreciate the gesture.

After twenty minutes his Lady sank back on her heels and clutched her head. He could see the Stone of the Witchblade swirling and flashing even from his hiding place. Ian wondered what the voices of the Witchblade, the voices of all the true wielders who had passed before her and the weapon's own strong sentience, were telling her. Of past loves lost? Of the fact that Daniel had found Joan too late to ask her to perform the mercy Sara had been forced to extend?

Sara let go of her head and sighed, leaning forward to kiss the still man one last time. Ian made a mental note to order one of Father's men, now his, to take care of the body and all the evidence left in the room. It was not the first time he had cleaned up after her to protect her from Dante and the other White Bulls as well as well-meaning good cops. He knew it would not be the last time, either. Sara staggered to her feet and turned in his direction.

"Rooftop, now," she ordered.

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When she reached the open night air moments after he did, Ian handed Sara a sword. She frowned at the weapon in her hand.

"The Witchblade will not activate against me, Lady Sara. But I would not deny you the opportunity to take out your pain and hatred against me. I, too, feel the need to destroy when life weighs down on me."

"Don't compare us, Nottingham," Sara spat.

She immediately swung the sword at him. He easily blocked it with his own weapon, the same one he had used earlier that night to slit Daniel's neck.

Because it was his Lady who was hurting so desperately, Ian let Sara cut him a few times, but stopped her from doing enough damage that he would not be able to continue his duty of protecting her. It was relatively easy to have the upper hand in a swordfight with his Lady. Although she was able to wield the Witchblade with an instinctual, deadly power, she had never had any real sword training. And he had, from the time he was a very small boy.

Eventually Sara's energy and fury waned and she noticed that he wasn't truly fighting back. She stopped attacking him.

Sara handed the sword back to Ian, the anger at both herself and him evident on her expressive face. Neither of them could have foreseen that as he took the weapon from her right hand the Witchblade would extend a tendril to him, giving him a vision of more pain yet to come.

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Ian had to fight to see the vision the Witchblade gave him as more than a blur. The Blade had always spoken to him from a distance before; this swirl of images and sounds was more intense than any previous vision. He wasn't sure he had caught all of what the Blade had tried to show him when Sara snatched her hand away, but what he had seen made his insides burn.

Himself, working with a woman who looked like his Lady but was no more than an empty, ruthless copy. The sandy haired bard from his earlier flash, this time setting aside his music to fight for a dead friend's revenge. The bard almost losing his life, beaten within an inch of death's grasp by the Sara-twin. Himself, clinging to the cheap copy of his Lady because it was the closest he could get to having the real thing. The bard leaving after healing, not being able to deal with the complication that was his Lady's life. His Lady blaming him again, and rightfully so. But the darkness to follow these events would destroy them both.

Sara was watching him warily when he dared to look at her. She asked bitterly, "What did it show you?"

"Destruction, despair, heartache. The things we do to each other," Ian answered. He hesitated a moment before he continued, hoping she would let them both fulfill the roles they were meant to and not continue to fight each other at every turn. But he knew the chance of her going with Destiny instead of fighting it was slim to none. "Help me, Lady Sara. Let me help you. It is the way things are supposed to be. Not this constant struggle Father forced upon us. The Witchblade knows we need each other. Let me fulfill my duty as your Knight."

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Sara stared at him for several minutes. But Ian did not allow his hope to rise; he could see that her gaze was blank. He knew she had heard him, but what she was thinking now, if she was thinking anything at all, was a complete mystery.

Finally Sara snapped out of it. She sighed. She looked tired, worn down. He knew she had yet to mourn her latest loss but hoped for her sake that her formidable strength returned soon. She would need it in the battles to come. And no matter how difficult loving her so passionately yet unrequitedly was, if she were to die or disappear from his life completely, he would be in hell.

For just a moment, he allowed himself to imagine what it would be like to fight by her side instead of against her. The most amazing sense of light and hope and rightness flooded him, hurting him almost as much as utter despair. He had never been trained to deal with good feelings, only the bad ones. And even that training flew out the window when it came to his Lady.

When Sara spoke, it was only one word. Ian stiffened for a moment before turning away, knowing that him being gone was what his Lady wanted. That one word coming from her had always hurt worse than any torture he had undergone, any fight he had come anywhere near losing. He had been called many dark and dirty things by many different people, but no one could lay him low with a single word like she could. Her power over him was that absolute. As Ian traveled the shadows back to his gilded cage, Sara's curse echoed from every corner.

"Freak."


End file.
